Yawn
by argentia-writes
Summary: Ed's never had any tact- conscious or not.
She had just bolted the main steel plate down and exclaimed 'Finished!' when he tottered over to a wooden bench and collapsed. Several minutes later, he turned his head and met her gaze with bleary eyes.

"Why're ya starin' at me?" He slurred.

"You collapsed onto a hard wooden bench after just getting repairs." She replied.

He shrugged minutely. "Jus' tired." He rolled over so his back faced her.

"There are better choices for collapsing upon." She motioned vaguely about the room, and noticing that she wasn't going to get any more conversation out of him, she picked up a customer's automail right foot and her favourite screwdriver.

He grunted in response after hearing the characteristic creaks of screws being unscrewed from their places in the steel plates of automail.

Miss Anna complained that she couldn't move her big toe, right? That could mean that the medial plantar nerve wasn't working. The wire could be frayed, maybe. What colour were those wires? Blue?

She opened the toe up so she could see past the protective coating around the wires, and noticed there was nothing wrong with the blue wire. It could be an underlying problem in the wires hub at the base of the foot...

Her esoteric understanding of automail led her right back to the big toe. The tiny bolt in the joint had jostled itself into the inner workings of the big toe's hinge joint just far enough to block its range of movement. An easy fix.

With a satisfied sigh and a spine-popping stretch, she placed the foot right back into its cubbyhole in the wall labelled 'Miss Anna Parrish'.

Winry had a sudden feeling of something being slightly off. A quick pause in her breathing and the halting of shifting in her chair told her that Ed had gone eerily quiet.

Usually he would be hovering over her as she worked, getting just close enough for his hair to almost get caught in the joints (which had happened once or twice. He definitely learned from that experience), but he kept his distance, way...back...on the bench.  
She scowled slightly and huffed a sharp breath through her nose. What was wrong with him? He slept a lot, sure, but he didn't collapse after everything he did.

"'S wrong?" She heard him mutter.

"What's wrong with you?" She replied indignantly. "You're being so...lazy."

"Hm."

"That's all I get? A 'hm'?" She questioned.

"Mm."

She rolled her eyes extravagantly and plodded towards his bench. She nudged his mismatched feet out of the way slightly to make room for her butt, and narrowed her eyes. Did he go run from Resembool to Bellenau yesterday? He was gone quite a while after lunch.

So, she sat there, with her arms crossed and eyes narrowed, just looking at him. Damnit, she never knew what he was doing, ever! Even when he was staying for repairs, he never told her anything!

"Ed?"

"Mm."

She took that as an acknowledgement. "You know, I care about you. But you never tell me anything. I never know why. Maybe you're trying to protect me, but I'd rather know exactly what you're facing than have you try to keep me from knowing by the code of cracked-up chivalry." Her tone was slightly tinged with hints of bitterness. Why did he do this? Did he think she would rather be in the dark than out there helping him with whatever he's facing?

"..."

"Ed. You know, men express themselves with actions rather words, and that makes me think. Do you try to show me what you're facing, what you're attempting to protect me from by your actions? Like how I'm doing right now... but with words?"

Again, this garnered no response from Ed.

"I care about you, in-" Her face lit up like a bonfire. Was she really about to say this? When had she gotten so gutsy? "In a different way. More...more than a brotherly-sisterly way. And... do you know what it would do to Alphonse and I if something happened to you? I would never know what happened to you because- because you never tell me what's happening to you!" She clamped her mouth shut. There was no way anything else like that coming out of her. After this, she would definitely shut herself in her workshop for several hours...

Ed was silent.

What?

She was sure the... _that_ part would get him to react somehow. This was unbelievably uncharacteristic. A spiel like that would usually get something more out of him than a simple grunt.

"Ed, are you even listening? I'm not repeating that again,"

Ed grumbled quietly and pulled himself up on to his elbows. He yawned a wide, gives-you-a-quadruple chin kind of yawn, and through it, said, "Were-were you say-ing something, Win?"

Winry froze. As realization dawned on her, her eyebrows drifted lower and lower, and a certain metal tool gripped tightly in her white-knuckled fist drifted higher and higher into view.

"What did I do! Please don't hit mE-!"

 _"EDWARD ELRIC, DID YOU JUST SLEEP THROUGH ALL OF THAT?!"_

"SLEEP THROUGH WHA-!"

 _ **THUNK.**_


End file.
